Taylor to challenge Kobach ruling keeping him on Senate ballot

The Kansas Republican Party is calling Shawnee County District Attorney Chad Taylor's withdrawal from the U.S. Senate race a "corrupt bargain."

Chad Taylor, the Shawnee County district attorney who withdrew as the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, said Thursday he will challenge Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s ruling that Taylor will remain on the Nov. 4 ballot.

Kobach, a Republican, said Thursday that Taylor had failed to meet the legal requirements to withdraw, so his name must stay on the ballot.

Taylor submitted to Kobach’s office an affidavit Wednesday on his campaign’s letterhead declaring that he wouldn’t be on the ballot in November. The document was delivered just before the deadline for making a request to be pulled from the Kansas ballot.

Candidates wanting to be removed from the ballot must declare themselves “incapable of fulfilling the duties of office if elected,” and Taylor didn’t meet that test, Kobach said.

“Mr. Taylor is an attorney, and he is capable of reading the statute, and the statute is very clear on this point,” he said.

In response, Taylor said in a prepared statement he was challenging the ruling of Kobach, “who serves on Pat Roberts’ Honorary Committee,” referring to the three-term Republican incumbent U.S. senator who may stand to benefit if Taylor remains on the ballot.

Taylor’s statement said he contacted Brad Bryant, of Kobach’s elections staff, and was provided “explicit instructions” regarding what was required in his letter to remove his name. He said Bryant confirmed the letter contained all the information necessary to withdraw his name.

“Upon confirming that my letter would remove my name from the ballot, I presented identification, signed the notary ledger and signed the letter before a Secretary of State employee notarized it,” Taylor’s statement said. “I again confirmed with Mr. Bryant that this notarized letter removed my name from the ballot. He again said ‘Yes.’ My candidacy in this race was terminated yesterday.”

Independent candidate Greg Orman has emerged as a possible kingmaker in the fierce national fight between Democrats and Republicans over control of the U.S. Senate.

In an odd twist, some Democrats pushed out Taylor, their own candidate against Pat Roberts, to clear the way for Orman. Republicans said Thursday the Democrat must remain on the ballot, hoping to split the anti-Roberts vote.

The maneuvering landed Orman, a 45-year-old co-founder of a business capital and management services firm from the conservative Kansas City suburb of Olathe, in the national spotlight.

A Democratic candidate in 2007 for the same Senate seat, Orman has been registered to vote with both major political parties in the past but is now unaffiliated. He pitches himself as a centrist who can break partisan gridlock — and promises to caucus with whichever party has the majority in the Senate after the November election.

He contributed to the 2008 presidential campaigns of Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, but also to moderate Republican Scott Brown’s campaign for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts in 2010 and conservative GOP Rep. Todd Akin, of Missouri, years before a comment from Akin about “legitimate rape” torpedoed his 2012 bid for the U.S. Senate.

“If I’m elected, there is a fair chance that neither party in Washington will have a majority,” Orman said hours before Taylor withdrew from the race Wednesday. “If we get four or five months into this, and it’s clear that the party that we’ve selected to be in the majority isn’t walking the talk, isn’t solving problems, isn’t moving past partisanship, we can change our allegiance and caucus with the other party.”

Orman’s sudden political fame stems from the vulnerability of 78-year-old Roberts after he won a difficult GOP primary against a tea party challenger with only 48 percent of the vote. The GOP needs a net gain of six seats to gain control of the Senate and needs Roberts to hold onto the seat.

Republicans enjoy a nearly 20 percentage-point voter registration advantage in Kansas and have won every U.S. Senate race since 1932. But GOP moderates remain a factor, and Democrats have won five of the past 10 governors’ races.

Roberts’ campaign said Taylor’s withdrawal emerged from a “corrupt bargain” between Orman and Democratic leaders. Adam Jentleson, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, of Nevada, said the leader “had absolutely nothing to do with this.”

But Democratic officials confirmed that Sen. Claire McCaskill, of Missouri, spoke to Taylor in recent days about abandoning his campaign. They spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because they couldn’t publicly discuss the private maneuvering.